Brady, Manning, Brees File Antitrust Suit Against NFL

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 03: New Orleans Saints' Drew Brees (R), a member of the NFL Players Association executive committee, makes his way into the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service building for the NFL labor negotiations on March 3, 2011 in Washington, DC. The NFL owners are locked in negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association, ahead of a midnight expiration of the current contact. (Photo by Rod Lamkey/Getty Images) Tom Brady, Drew Brees (above), and Peyton Manning filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL on Friday. (Photo by Rod Lamkey/Getty Images)

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – MVP Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees are among the players who filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL on Friday to prevent a lockout.

Just after the players’ union decertified, the star quarterbacks and seven other players filed suit against the NFL in U.S. District Court, seeking class-action status. They also filed a request for an injunction that would keep the NFL and the teams from engaging in a lockout.

The players allege in the lawsuit that the organizations conspired to deny the players’ ability to market their services, “through a patently unlawful group boycott and price-fixing arrangement or, in the alternative, a unilaterally imposed set of anticompetitive restrictions on player movement, free agency, and competitive market freedom.”

The collective bargaining agreement with the league expires at the end of Friday.

The case was assigned Friday afternoon to U.S. District judge Patrick Schiltz, not his colleague David Doty, who has overseen NFL labor matters since the early 1990s and has several times ruled in favor of the players. The lawsuit still could end up in front of Doty. New cases are randomly assigned to judges when they’re filed, but they are sometimes reassigned to others on the bench with expertise in a certain issue.

Doty, who helped engineer the initial agreement between owners and players that opened the doors to free agency, issued a ruling last week that backed the NFLPA in a dispute over $4 billion in TV revenue that players argue was illegally collected by the owners as a war chest to survive a work stoppage.

The league has tried in the past to remove Doty from the case, alleging bias toward the players.

Also involved in bringing the lawsuit: San Diego receiver Vincent Jackson, Minnesota linebacker Ben Leber and defensive end Brian Robison, New England guard Logan Mankins, New York Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora, Kansas City linebacker Mike Vrabel, and Texas A&M linebacker Von Miller, who is entered in this year’s draft.

“The torch has been passed to a young Aggie who has decided to put his name on a lawsuit,” Smith said.

Manning, Jackson, Leber and Mankins are free agents. The Colts tagged Manning as a franchise player, while the Chargers did the same with Jackson and the Patriots with Mankins. The union is disputing the validity of those tags.

The players allege that the NFL conspired to deny the players’ ability to market their services.

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